Priority threat management of invasive animals to protect biodiversity under climate change

Climate change is a major threat to global biodiversity, and its impacts can act synergistically to heighten the severity of other threats. Most research on projecting species range shifts under climate change has not been translated to informing priority management strategies on the ground. We develop a prioritization framework to assess strategies for managing threats to biodiversity under climate change and apply it to the management of invasive animal species across one-sixth of the Australian continent, the Lake Eyre Basin. We collected information from key stakeholders and experts on the impacts of invasive animals on 148 of the region's most threatened species and 11 potential strategies. Assisted by models of current distributions of threatened species and their projected distributions, experts estimated the cost, feasibility, and potential benefits of each strategy for improving the persistence of threatened species with and without climate change. We discover that the relative cost-effectiveness of invasive animal control strategies is robust to climate change, with the management of feral pigs being the highest priority for conserving threatened species overall. Complementary sets of strategies to protect as many threatened species as possible under limited budgets change when climate change is considered, with additional strategies required to avoid impending extinctions from the region. Overall, we find that the ranking of strategies by cost-effectiveness was relatively unaffected by including climate change into decision-making, even though the benefits of the strategies were lower. Future climate conditions and impacts on range shifts become most important to consider when designing comprehensive management plans for the control of invasive animals under limited budgets to maximize the number of threatened species that can be protected.

Neoliberal austerity and unemployment

Neoliberal fiscal austerity policies decrease public expenditure through cuts to central and local government budgets, welfare services and benefits and privatisation of public resources resulting in job losses. This article interrogates the empirical, theoretical, methodological and ideological relationships between neoliberalism, unemployment and the discipline of psychology, arguing that neoliberalism constitutes rather than causes unemployment...

Diabetes in South Asians

Economic, dietary and other lifestyle transitions have been occurring rapidly in most South Asian countries, making their populations more vulnerable to developing Type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular diseases. Recent data show an increasing prevalence of Type 2 diabetes in urban areas as well as in semi-urban and rural areas, inclusive of people belonging to middle and low socio-economic strata. Prime determinants for Type 2 diabetes in South Asians include physical inactivity, imbalanced diets, abdominal obesity, excess hepatic fat and, possibly, adverse perinatal and early life nutrition and intra-country migration. It is reported that Type 2 diabetes affects South Asians a decade earlier and some complications, for example nephropathy, are more prevalent and progressive than in other races. Further, prevalence of pre-diabetes is high, and so is conversion to diabetes, while more than 50% of those who are affected remain undiagnosed. Attitudes, cultural differences and religious and social beliefs pose barriers in effective prevention and management of Type 2 diabetes in South Asians. Inadequate resources, insufficient healthcare budgets, lack of medical reimbursement and socio-economic factors contribute to the cost of diabetes management. The challenge is to develop new translational strategies, which are pragmatic, cost-effective and scalable and can be adopted by the South Asian countries with limited resources. The key areas that need focus are: generation of awareness, prioritizing health care for vulnerable subgroups (children, women, pregnant women and the underprivileged), screening of high-risk groups, maximum coverage of the population with essential medicines, and strengthening primary care. An effective national diabetes control programme in each South Asian country should be formulated, with these issues in mind.

PREPARE Study: Patient satisfaction survey with care provided in the low clearance clinic

Background Formalised predialysis care has been shown to extend the wellness of individuals with advanced chronic kidney disease, slow disease progression and increase the uptake of home dialysis. Predialysis care, incorporating multidisciplinary input is also vital in delaying the onset of end-stage kidney disease and reducing hospital admissions; thereby decreasing financial demands on health budgets. Predialysis care should include comprehensive information provision and predialysis education. This empowers patients to choose self-care strategies and therapies.

Phoenix activity: Regulatory challenges and the law

Remedying the mischief of phoenix activity is of practical importance. The benefits include continued confidence in our economy, law that inspires best practice among directors, and law that is articulated in a manner such that penalties act as a sufficient deterrent and the regulatory system is able to detect offenders and bring them to account. Any further reforms must accommodate and tolerate legal phoenix activity. Phoenix activity pushes tolerance of entrepreneurial activity to its absolute limits. The wisest approach would be to front end the reforms so as to alleviate the considerable detection and enforcement burden upon regulatory bodies. There is little doubt that breach of the existing law is difficult and expensive to detect; and this is a significant burden when regulators have shrinking budgets and are rapidly losing feet on the ground. This front end approach may need to include restrictions on access to limited liability. The more limited liability is misused, the stronger the argument to limit access to limited liability. This paper proposes that such an approach is a legitimate next step for a robust and mature capitalist economy.

Future learning landscapes for architectural education: Linking space, place, pedagogy, technology + context

Diversification and expansion of global higher education in the 21st century, has resulted in Learning Landscapes for architectural education that can no longer be sustained by the traditional model. Changes have resulted because of surging student numbers, extensions to traditional curricula, evolving competency standards and accreditation requirements, and modified geographical and pedagogical boundaries. The influx of available new technology has helped to democratise knowledge, transforming when, where and how learning takes place. Pressures on government funded higher education budgets highlight the need for a critical review of the current approach to the design and use of learning environments. Efficient design of physical space contributes significantly to savings in provision, management and use of facilities, while also potentially improving pedagogical quality. The purpose of this research is to identify emerging trends in the design of future Learning Landscapes for architectural education in Australasia; to understand where and how students of architecture are likely to learn, in the future context. It explores the important linkages between space, place, pedagogy, technology and context, using a multi methodological qualitative research approach. An Australasian context study will explore the Learning Landscapes of 23 Schools of Architecture across Australia, New Zealand and Papua New Guinea. The focus of this paper is on the methodology which is being employed to undertake dynamic data collection for the study. The research will be determined through mapping all forms of architectural learning environments, pedagogical approaches and contextual issues, to bridge the gap between academic theory, and architectural design practice. An initial understanding that pedagogy is an intrinsic component imbedded within the design of learning environments, will play an important role. Active learning environments which are exemplified by the architectural design studio, support dynamic project based and collaborative connected learning models. These have recently become a lot more common in disciplines outside of design and the arts. It is anticipated, therefore, that the implications for this research may well have a positive impact far beyond the confines of the architectural studio learning environment.

The architecture of the psychiatric milieu

The last time a peer-reviewed volume on the future of mental health facilities was produced was in 1959, following a symposium organised by the American Psychological Association. The consensus was easy enough to follow and still resonates today: the best spaces to treat psychiatric illness will be in smaller, less restrictive units that offer more privacy and allow greater personalisation of space – possibly a converted hotel (Goshen, 1959). In some way, all those ideals have come to pass. An ideal typology was never established, but even so, units have shrunk from thousands of beds to units that typically house no more than 50 patients. Patients are generally more independent and are free to wander (within a unit) as they please. But the trend toward smaller and freer is reversing. This change is not driven by a desire to find the ideal building nor better models of care, but by growing concerns about budgets, self-harm and psychiatric violence. This issue of the Facilities comes at a time when the healthcare design is increasingly dominated by codes, statutes and guidelines. But the articles herein are a call to stop and think. We are not at the point where guidelines can be helpful, because they do not embody any depth of knowledge nor wisdom. These articles are intended to inject some new research on psychiatric/environmental interactions and also to remind planners and managers that guidelines might not tackle a core misunderstanding: fear-management about patient safety and the safety of society is not the purpose of the psychiatric facility. It is purpose is to create spaces that are suitable for improving the well-being of the mentally ill.

Sampling frequency affects estimates of annual nitrous oxide fluxes

Quantifying nitrous oxide (N(2)O) fluxes, a potent greenhouse gas, from soils is necessary to improve our knowledge of terrestrial N(2)O losses. Developing universal sampling frequencies for calculating annual N(2)O fluxes is difficult, as fluxes are renowned for their high temporal variability. We demonstrate daily sampling was largely required to achieve annual N(2)O fluxes within 10% of the best estimate for 28 annual datasets collected from three continents, Australia, Europe and Asia. Decreasing the regularity of measurements either under- or overestimated annual N(2)O fluxes, with a maximum overestimation of 935%. Measurement frequency was lowered using a sampling strategy based on environmental factors known to affect temporal variability, but still required sampling more than once a week. Consequently, uncertainty in current global terrestrial N(2)O budgets associated with the upscaling of field-based datasets can be decreased significantly using adequate sampling frequencies.